


Moving Forward

by SarcasticSketches



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alt Title: Link and Zelda's New Groove, Based off of the BotW2 teaser, Before botw2, Chapters ~2k words, F/M, Post-Calamity Ganon, Post-Canon, Zonai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-12 13:49:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19230379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarcasticSketches/pseuds/SarcasticSketches
Summary: A collection of scenes set before the events of the BotW2 teaser and after the end of the Calamity. Covering Link and Zelda's new looks and what developments they have made in researching events from 10,000 years ago.





	1. Chapter 1

A year had passed since Zelda had been freed from her confinement within the Castle – a confinement that was of her own doing – and she had been spending her days in Hateno village. Alongside Link.

Both of them had chosen to mellow out for a time, regardless of what anyone else wished of them and the general populace seemed to have respected that. It took Hyrule a good long while for word to travel of what had transpired at the Castle, what the red sky had meant and what the subsequent burning, golden light that had consumed Hyrule Field was. But word of mouth and letters clutched by Rito talons were fine tools in spreading the news.

At first, Zelda had been unsure of where her place was in this new age. The Kingdom lay in ruins and the world had moved on and healed around it, trying to resurrect the monarchy was a tall order. Perhaps, an unnecessary one.

So, it was with gratitude that Link had taken her home with him, to his secluded house up in the hills of Hateno village, where both himself and Zelda could be left to rest undisturbed. They seemed to fall into quite an easy routine, the pair of them together, and Link was happy to share whatever he owned with her. It wasn’t really a surprise to either of them when Zelda took Link’s face in her hands and kissed him one day, just because she could. Just as it wasn’t a surprise when Link told her that he hoped she would stay with him for the rest of his life. A promise she could easily make.

Despite the year they took to simply enjoy _being alive_ , neither could stay idle for long and soon they were adventuring again, crossing over territory made new with one hundred years of age. Zelda was particularly pleased with the progress Link had made with utilising the Sheikah Slate and with how many Shrines he had activated. That is to say, all of them.

However, a small problem started to occur to Zelda. Namely, her hair.

“How did I manage with all this before?” She despaired, passing a brush through her tresses for the third time that night and still encountering knots as she sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t remember having this much trouble.”

Unable to watch her struggle any longer, Link came to sit behind her, taking the brush from her hand and resuming where she had left off. He parted her hair gently to run the brush through, teasing strands apart when he came across resistance to stop her hair from snapping. Zelda sighed.

“Hmm, I guess I did have people to help me before. Maids would often brush my hair and put it up for me for special occasions. I wasn’t getting tangled in overgrown jungles and having wind swept hair everyday,” she mused, leaning back into Link’s hands as he continued to brush her hair in silence.

They stayed sat on the bed for quite some time, with Zelda’s long, gold hair flowing from Link’s hands like water. He moved to undo her braids at the top of her head, admiring the way her hair was slightly kinked from where it had been woven tightly all day.

He was just about to start putting all of it into a central plait, ready for bed, when Zelda gently grasped his wrists to make him stop.

“Link, I have a more permanent solution,” she said. Intrigued, Link shuffled forward to kneel beside her so he could see her face, still wielding the brush in one hand. “What if I just … cut it off?”

He immediately looked shocked and an aborted noise managed to escape his throat. Zelda watched, restraining a grin as she watched his eyes dart to her hair, the hair he had so lovingly been caressing mere moments before. Then his expression morphed to one of contemplation as he actually considered what having shorter hair would mean. 

Zelda decided to help him along with that.

“It takes so much time and effort to upkeep that I could be spending on other things, not to mention shorter hair means less to grab in the event of a fight.”

Link blinked at her, nodding slowly. 

“Besides, I…” She paused, thinking carefully on how to formulate her next words, “my long hair was so integral to the image I portrayed as the Princess. I’m not that person anymore. This,” she said, grabbing a length of hair, “isn’t me anymore.”

Blue eyes softened at her words and he leaned over her to put the brush down on the bedside table. He smiled at her, nodding once before getting up off the bed and raising a hand to his own hair, positioned just below his ear.

“How short do you want it?” He asked, waving his hand up and down to indicate hair length.

Reaching over, Zelda placed his hand against her own hair, level with her shoulders, “here will do just fine. Just enough to be manageable, I think.”

“Ok, let me go get a sword,” Link said, stepping away from her, only for Zelda to immediately latch onto him again, eyes wide.

“Wait, _you’re_ going to cut my hair? With a sword?!”

“You trust anyone more than me to wield a blade so accurately?”

“Scissors are still a thing in this era, I believe.”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

Zelda gave a put upon sigh, before swivelling round on the bed so her back was facing him, with her hair hanging over the floor.

“Alright, let’s do this. I trust you, but maybe just a small- _Do not_ use the Master Sword!” She said, after hearing the tell-tale sound of a blade being drawn from it’s sheath.

There was a pause before the distinct slide of metal being returned to it’s home reached her ears and then the chime of the Sheikah Slate being activated.

“… I think the Master Sword would be happy to cut your hair…” Link muttered, perusing the Slate.

All in all, once Link had finally chosen a decent weapon with which to cut off Zelda’s hair, the process took about half an hour. The actual loss of her hair was over in one fell swipe, but Link took care to neaten off the edges and make it fit around her neck. He was surprisingly good with all things related to personal presentation, even though he took none of his own advice in regards to himself. Except for his eyeliner.

 _Maybe I should ask him to do mine tomorrow before we leave,_ Zelda thought.

With a final few gentle caresses from Link’s scimitar, the last few feathers of Zelda’s hair drifted to the floor, landing on the rest of the lopped off strands. Link stood back to admire his work, fluffing up her hair at the back in places before handing Zelda a mirror.

“Ta-da.”

Zelda gazed at her reflection and marvelled at how different she looked now with short hair and yet it was still her looking back. An older, wiser version, but still her. It was much more practical and she beamed with delight as she whirled around to face Link, eyes gleaming.

“Link! This is wonderful, thank you!”

She would have gone to hug him but as soon as she had turned around Link’s jaw had gone slack and a slight blush began to dust his cheeks. 

_Oh no. She’s become even cuter,_ Link realised, staggered by the image before him as he continued to stare unabashedly. He was never going to win a single debate against her ever again, he just knew it.

The sheer look of awe upon his face caused Zelda to giggle – she was not prone to _giggling_ \- and she fluffed her hair some more, enjoying the feel of it in her hands.

“You like it then?”

Still rendered mute, Link nodded slowly, giving her a thumbs up once he managed to pull himself back together

“Good, because I like it too!”

It was almost therapeutic in a way, as Zelda tidied up all of the chopped off pieces of hair from the floor only to bury them outside next to the ashes of her prayer dress. She was finally free. Like a bird.

___________________

Link contemplated the articles of clothing laid out before him on the bed. He liked having complete sets and over the year it took him to reunite with Zelda he had managed to acquire all of the armour each region had to offer. Not only that but they were all enhanced to the height of their potential, thanks to some Great Fairy magic.

He was currently eyeing his traditional Hylian garb, which he had bought here in Hateno. It had good fabric durability and depending on the weather he could add or remove layers as he needed. Nevertheless, his eyes strayed once again to his Champion’s Tunic. He could dye every other item of clothing to try and replicate it’s look, but there was something so iconic and personal about that tunic he just couldn’t let it go. 

It was also the strongest item of clothing he owned.

The Champion’s Tunic had not only survived his encounter with a flood of Guardians some one hundred years ago, it had also stood up to Link’s harsh treatment of it during his quest. Plus, it seemed to grant him a strange sixth sense with which to gauge the strength of an enemy and when it was weakening.

 _Wonder if that was Zelda’s magic at work without her even knowing,_ he considered, running his fingers over the white embroidery work. Stitched by the Princess’ own hand.

Not that she was a Princess anymore.

“Link, are you ready to go? I’d like to reach Dueling Peaks before the sun goes down,” Zelda called up from the bottom floor of their house.

 _Their_ house. Link’s knees turned to jelly for a second.

The sound of footfalls ascending the stairs preceded Zelda as she came up to see what was taking Link so long to get ready. They had been planning this little expedition to the Great Plateau for weeks, as a way to start up research again with Robbie and Purah. Purah was no doubt starting to get impatient as she waited for them to join her by the roadside leading out of Hateno at that very moment.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs and finding Link standing next to their bed in nothing but his boxers, Zelda heaved a huge sigh and dropped her heavy pack.

“Have you even bothered packing things to take with you?”

Link made a non-committal humming noise, still staring at the clothes before him, and Zelda spied a full backpack with climbing ropes and tools strapped to the side.

Coming closer she watched for a couple of minutes as Link tried to riddle the dilemma of having too many clothes – honestly, he had more outfits than Zelda had ever seen one person own. After letting him contemplate in silence she nudged his shoulder to grab his attention.

“What’s the problem?”

“I like my Hylian gear but if I wear that then I can’t wear my Champion’s Tunic,” Link muttered.

Zelda blinked, “why not? Just wear both?”

At first, the idea of mismatching a set outfit almost offended him but then he recalled all the times he had worn one part of a set with another for the sake of their enhancements. However, the idea of combining pieces together had never occurred to him before.

He swapped out the top layer of the Hylian tunic for his Champion’s blue and fitted the rest of the leather guards in place over the top. He turned to face Zelda for her opinion.

“What do you think?”

Zelda made a pondering noise before picking up his Hylian hood and fastening it snugly around his shoulders. Once she was done, she stepped back again to admire the view – and what a nice view it was – and traced the edges of her own dark cape.

“There. Now we match!”

Link grinned and then, in no time at all, he was ready and waiting by the front door to leave, like an overexcited dog. He was also shouldering a heavy bag for their journey.

 _He gets stalled by the oddest of things…_ Zelda despaired, smiling despite herself as she came to stand by him. _But why this particularly?_

“Link? Why the Champion’s tunic? Neither of us have to play those roles anymore.”

The question seemed to fluster Link for a second, in his own subtle way – ears flickering and eyes darting away – before he focused on her again.

“Because you made it.”

He made the answer sound obvious and Zelda felt her cheeks heat up a little bit.

“You made this, for me. Granted you probably did it begrudgingly at the time but,” Link paused as he ran a hand down his front, admiring her needlework, “it means a lot to me. It’s been through a lot with me too.”

It was such an incredibly endearing answer that Zelda couldn’t do much in response except to tilt Link’s face towards her and plant a kiss on his cheek. Still speechless, she pulled back to look into his eyes and he smiled at her in understanding, resting his forehead against hers. 

Actions often spoke louder than words anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had spare time waiting for experiment reactions in the lab and wrote this quickly to explain my takes on their new looks.


	2. Zonai Link

**Events of 10,000 Years Ago**

The Calamity had been sealed. The Princess and the Hero combined forces of both grace and might to defeat and seal away the great evil. Yet, it was with a heavy heart that the Kingdom learned of the Hero’s sacrifice to obtain such a victory.

He had been an unlikely Hero at first; a man of the Zonai people, who had hailed from deep within the Faron region. The Zonai were a very reclusive people who were particularly devoted to the ideals of courage and bravery. So much so that their spiritual hub was built upon the grounds surrounding the Spring of Courage itself, with a large dragon’s head sculpted from stone to guard it. No symbol was more important to the Zonai than that of a dragon. It is perhaps no wonder that Farore’s Champion was born into such a culture.

Their warriors were the most venerated of their people, but they were not all brawn without brains as some within Hyrule were prone to comment, unkindly. They were excellent crafters, as evidenced by the intricate carvings in their architecture – clearly art was just as important to them as displays of strength - and they were powerful with their ability to weave magic into inanimate objects, augmenting their natural capabilities. But they were also wise through their knowledge of the natural world around them, living with it rather than expecting it to bend to their wishes. 

All in all, they lived and breathed the three aspects of the Golden Sacred power far better than the common Hylian. However, it was not the Golden Goddesses they directly revered, but a spiritual creature that presides over the Faron region. The Dragon of Thunder, Farosh.

It is perhaps no wonder that such a culture, so heavily influenced by their spiritual beliefs in every facet of their lives, would have strong ties with the Sheikah. The Sheikah structure their lives around the wishes of the Goddess Hylia and it was for this reason that they are so loyal to the Hylian monarchy, following the bloodline of the Goddess herself through the ages. Through their allegiance with the Hylian monarchy they built machines and shared techniques that would ensure the safety of the Kingdom for years to come. However, their allegiance with the Zonai created something a little different.

Even though the Kingdom mourned for the loss of the Hero, it was overshadowed by the relief they felt that their Princess had survived. None felt the loss of the Hero as keenly as the Zonai, who had essentially lost their avatar of Courage in this world. But he had died in battle, a battle against the greatest evil the world had ever seen. To die fighting in order to secure victory for those who were left behind was one of the most honourable deaths a Zonain could achieve. As such, they wished to honour him and leave the avatar of Courage with something that would harken back to his days in a previous life, where he had been loved by many. His Warrior Armour.

Together with the Sheikah, they set about creating large mazes that would be filled with challenges and at it’s heart there would be a Sheikah Shrine. A Shrine that only the Hero could enter, to test him and train him, before reclaiming that which was once his. Zonians never liked to make something easy. To be without challenge was to be without fun, they said.

In each Shrine they placed a piece of his armour. The Hero had not been wearing all of it when he fought the Calamity, having been given a tunic that was ‘fitting of a Hero’ by the Crown. He had, however, refused to part with his headdress and he still proudly wore his battle paint beneath the excessive swathes of fabric. The Princess had been the one to return the Warrior’s Headdress to the Zonai, with her deepest apologies that she could not do more to ensure his survival. 

It had not seemed right to have the armour be complete when it’s wearer was no longer among them.

Three mazes, in three corners of the Kingdom – none of which were simple to get to either, again, no fun in that – were built to honour their lost Hero and keep a piece of the armour safe. To honour and to welcome him home once he returned to Hyrule.

** Present Day **

Zelda was squinting at the Sheikah Slate’s description for one of Link’s items of clothing. If she could call it that. The Barbarian Armour was clearly not built with finer etiquettes in mind. Despite it’s rather unorthodox coverage of the human body she would, however, begrudgingly admit that it looked good on Link. _Very_ good in fact. Almost as if … it were made for him.

Zelda paused.

“Link, where did you find this again?” She asked.

They were both lying in the middle of a grassy field, mid-autumn sun warming their skin as Zelda conducted her studies. She must have gotten distracted at some point because Link couldn’t remember her talking about armour at any point during her expedition plan. As he looked over to her he could see that she was holding up the skull headdress, it’s long red braids falling into her lap where the rest of the pieces of armour lay.

He scrunched his face in confusion and either unwilling or just too tired to operate his vocal chords, he shuffled over to where Zelda sat in a patch of wild violets. Leaning over her shoulder, he brought up the map on the Slate and pointed to the locations of each maze he had visited to get all of the pieces of armour.

“Huh,” Zelda supplied, unhelpfully, and Link flopped back onto the grass by her crossed legs.

He was left in peace for a few minutes more, letting his eyes close and with only his ear twitching occasionally when a persistent butterfly kept trying to land on it. As he drew dangerously close to having a nap, Zelda spoke up again.

“Those mazes, I’ve seen the photos you took they … they have Zonai carvings in them. Don’t they?”

 _Ah, now isn’t that just the buzz word of the year,_ Link thought, eyes still closed as he nodded against the blades of grass beneath his face.

Since her research had started up again, she and the two Sheikah scientists, Robbie and Purah, had been making leaps and bounds in advancements concerning the ancient Sheikah technology. In parallel to this, they had also discovered more about the Zonai, who seemed to have been rather close with the Sheikah before they all disappeared. As such, anything now concerning either ancient technology or the ancient culture immediately grabbed Zelda’s interest. 

Just last week they had found a carved entrance to a cavern that led deep underground, Zonai architecture and iconography was evident all over it. They hadn’t gone inside it yet as they were still planning what supplies they would need to take and how long it would take them to excavate it.

Link braced himself for the inevitable question; _can we go to the mazes?_

He started to practice his stern face in his head as he prepared himself to tell Zelda ‘no’ and ‘it’s too dangerous’. He didn’t like turning her down over anything but you couldn’t even reach one of the mazes without flying there, for Hylia’s sake. Not to mention the others were guarded by sheer cliffs or a very irritable Silver Lynel. Taking a deep breath, Link sighed as a vision of Zelda’s disappointed face swam to the front of his mind. He scowled just thinking about it.

“Why would the Zonai be involved with a Sheikah Shrine trial set for you?”

Zelda’s query threw Link for a loop and his carefully prepared argument crashed around his ears, but it certainly got his attention. Eyes snapping open, he pushed himself up to stare at her.

“You agree, right? Why would there be hallmarks of the Zonai in places that were clearly designed to test you, the Hero? Even the … ‘prize’, for lack of a better word, was armour crafted by their people,” she went on, gathering steam as she went. “Then again, they seemed to value the aspect of courage above all else, if their monuments around the Spring in the Faron jungle are any indication. Perhaps it was just a collaborative effort.”

The conversation was left to stew for a while as both parties thought over what had been said. It did seem rather fitting that the Zonai would enjoy helping set trials for the Hero, the one chosen for their courage. Putting in pieces of armour would even make sense for such a battle-centric culture but the armour was a suspiciously good fit. That and it filled him with a sense of … belonging? 

_The Hero is made to fight, so that’s no wonder,_ Link reasoned, content with his explanation.

Zelda, however, had clearly been of a similar mind but not of the same conclusion.

“Tell me, Link, does looking at this armour instil anything in you? Any feelings or perhaps even memories?”

Link, who struggled to recall memories of his own life, let alone previous ones, gave her a pained look.

“Ok, that was insensitive of me, I’m sorry. But it just seems so …”

“Fated,” Link said, as he took in the sight of the Barbarian Armour before him.

He really did feel nothing for it, except admiration for how much of a boost it gave him when fighting hordes of enemies. Even if it was just the magically applied paint that decorated his skin the moment he put the armour on. Yet, when Zelda went to put it away, he couldn’t help but feel that ‘Barbarian Armour’ wasn’t the right name for it.

In fact, it sounded rather rude.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by this absolutely kick ass art [here](https://twitter.com/hypherrr/status/1141074664006938624) and a following conversation in a chat with thankyourluckystars13
> 
> As for why the Armour becomes ‘Barbarian’ rather than ‘Warrior’ I imagine Hero Link was still as sassy and sarcastic as the current one, and he knew how others referred to his people and ironically re-dubbed his armour as an in-joke with the Sheikah. Unfortunately, jokes do not translate well across 10,000 years.
> 
> Let me know what you thought and whether I should continue to upload these!


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